Mysteries
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Hot to Trot: An Agatha Raisin Mystery
by M. C. Beaton, R.W. Green
Rating: 4.5 #ad
When Private Detective Agatha Raisin learns that her friend and one-time lover Charles Fraith is to be married to a mysterious socialite, Miss Mary Brown-Field, she sees it as her duty to find out what she can about the woman. Coming up empty, Agatha—out of selfless concern for Charles, of course—does the only sensible thing she can think of: she crashes their wedding, which ends in a public altercation. Nursing a hangover the next morning, she gets a phone call from Charles, with even more disturbing news: Mary has been murdered.
Agatha takes on the case, and quickly becomes entrenched in the competitive equestrian world, in which Mary had been enmeshed—as well as the victim’s surprisingly violent past.
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(Agatha Raisin Mysteries)
The Other Daughter
by Lisa Gardner
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Twenty years ago, Melanie Stokes was abandoned in a Boston hospital, then adopted by a wealthy young couple. Gifted with loving parents, a doting brother, and an indulgent uncle, Melanie has always considered herself lucky. Until the first cryptic, threatening note arrives: “You Get What You Deserve.”
Melanie has no memory of her life before the adoption. Now someone wants her to remember it all—even the darkest nightmare the Stokes family ever faced: the murder of their first daughter. As Melanie pursues every lead and chases every shadow in search of her real identity, two seemingly unrelated events from her past will come together in a dangerous explosion of truth.
In Name Only
by Carol Kilgore
Rating: 4.6 #ad
No home. No family. No place to hide. For Summer Newcombe, that’s only the beginning.
The night Summer escapes from a burning Padre Island eatery and discovers the arsonist is stalking her, is the same night she meets Fire Captain Gabriel Duran. As much as she’s attracted to Gabe, five years in the Federal Witness Security Program because of her father’s testimony against a mob boss have taught her the importance of being alone and invisible.
No matter how much she yearns for a real home, Summer relinquished that option the night she killed the man who murdered her father. But Gabe breaks down her guard and places both of them in danger.
The Old Scrapbook
by Dennis Higgins
Rating: 4.4 #ad
The Old Scrapbook is real. The characters within its pages were real as well. This story is an attempt to fill in the blanks of their actual relationship. Bet and Ray met, fell in love, and got engaged until a war separated them, World War II.
Seventy years later, the old scrapbook was found, and the mysteries involved rediscovered.
I became obsessed with the scrapbook and what could have become of the young woman, Bet, who created it. I felt that woman was somehow guiding me as I wrote the story. That’s how I felt from the beginning, like I was led to that war-time scrapbook by an unseeing hand that I could feel something from its pages.
Murder Is Best Served Bloody
by Rod Kackley
Rating: 4.0 #ad
Violent. Forceful. Gritty. Henry Branson’s Great American Dream has turned into a nightmare. But it is not his fault. Henry did his best. The people who ruined his dream are going to pay.
Henry believes in the American Dream and knows he can prove to his father and the young millennials who laugh at him just how good he is by starting his own software company.
But it all goes south. What should be a feel-good story of an entrepreneur and his American dream, turns into a crime and suspense story, noir pulp fiction for the twenty-first-century.
The Great Silence
by Doug Johnstone
Rating: 4.1 #ad
The discovery of a human foot in an Edinburgh park, the inexplicable circumstances of a dying woman, and the missing daughter of Jenny’s violent ex-husband present the Skelf women with their most challenging – and deadly – cases yet…
Keeping on top of the family funeral directors’ and private-investigation businesses is no easy task for the Skelf women, and when matriarch Dorothy discovers a human foot while walking the dog, a perplexing case presents itself … with potentially deadly results.
Daughter Jenny and grand-daughter Hannah have their hands full too: The mysterious circumstances of a dying woman lead them into an unexpected family drama, Hannah’s new astrophysicist colleague claims he’s receiving messages from outer space, and the Skelfs’ teenaged lodger has yet another devastating experience.
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(The Skelfs Mysteries)
The Maid By Mistake Rescue
by Jo Grafford
Rating: 5.0#ad
Brand New Release from Amazon Bestselling Author Jo Grafford.
A mistaken identity followed by an accidental attraction… Whoever said two wrongs can’t make a right must not have been in love.
Anxious to put a recent bad break-up behind him, Police Detective Noah Zeller jumps at the chance to sharpen his search and rescue skills at the world-class Disaster City Search and Rescue Academy. The only downside is that the missing heiress case he’s currently working will have to go on the back burner for a few weeks. Or so he thought. Until a sassy-mouthed maid provides a clue that busts his case wide open…
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Deception, Denial & Murder
by Christa Nardi
Rating: 4.6 #ad
A domineering co-worker, a flirtatious neighbor, and a dead body make for many questions and awkward situations.
As HR Specialist and trauma counselor, Stacie Maroni is used to dealing with difficult situations. When her night out is derailed by the discovery of a body outside a local watering hole, she’s glad she’s not involved. But when the police investigate and close friends are cast as potential suspects, Stacie will do whatever it takes to identify the true culprit, even if it creates waves with the men in her life, her father included. The suspect list is slim and she’s grasping at straws.
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(A Stacie Maroni Mysteries)
Adam’s Witness
by J.C. Paulson
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Where does justice end and vengeance begin? When newspaper journalist Grace Rampling learns that the Pride Choir has been banned from performing in the cathedral, she rushes to the church to get some answers.
Instead, she literally stumbles onto a grisly crime scene: the bishop is lying in a pool of his own blood before the altar. Suddenly, Grace is no longer the observer and reporter. She finds herself central to the case — not only as the key witness, but a suspect and even potential victim.
Lead investigator Detective Sergeant Adam Davis is thrown by the fierce attraction he feels toward Grace that, if acted upon, could throw the entire case into jeopardy.
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(Adam and Grace Mysteries)
Magic Triumphs
by Ilona Andrews
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Kate has come a long way from her origins as a loner taking care of paranormal problems in post-Shift Atlanta. She’s made friends and enemies. She’s found love and started a family with Curran Lennart, the former Beast Lord. But her magic is too strong for the power players of the world to let her be.
Kate and her father, Roland, currently have an uneasy truce, but when he starts testing her defenses again, she knows that sooner or later, a confrontation is inevitable. The Witch Oracle has begun seeing visions of blood, fire, and human bones. And when a mysterious box is delivered to Kate’s doorstep, a threat of war from the ancient enemy who nearly destroyed her family, she knows their time is up.
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(Kate Daniels Mysteries)
The Eclipse Dancer
by Laura Koerber
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Andy thought of flying. She imagined the air under her arms, her hair lifting and floating. She felt her heartbeat separate from the faraway beat and form its own rhythm: light, quick, a dancing thrum. When she opened her eyes, her yard was dusky and her mood had lightened. She let her gaze drift across the darkening landscape. Andy’s heart filled with exultation. She raised her arms, fanned out her fingers, and arched her feet until she was on her toes. She was assaulted by memories.
Her mother was dying, and Danny had been dead for years. Her daughter was in Minneapolis, and Alana was up in the North Woods someplace. All of her childhood friends–the fairies, Hairy, Mr. Tolliver, and Kenshi–were gone. Is it true that childhood is never overcome?
Bloody Bones
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Rating: 4.8 #ad
For the first time in trade paperback: the fifth novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Laurell K. Hamilton.
When Branson, Missouri, is hit with a death wave ‘four unsolved murders’ it doesn’t take an expert to realize that all is not well. But luckily for the locals, Anita Blake is an expert in the kinds of preternatural goings-on that have everyone spooked. And she’s got an ‘in’ with the creature that can make sense of the slayings-the sexy master vampire known as Jean-Claude.
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(Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Mysteries)
The Pine Barrens Stratagem
by Ken Harris
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Private Investigator Steve Rockfish needs cash, like yesterday. The bad news is that yesterday, a global pandemic raged, and Maryland was headed toward a lockdown that would ultimately lead to cheating spouses no longer “working late,” and hence a lack of new clients.
Rockfish’s luck changes when a Hollywood producer reaches out, but the job is two states away and involves digging up information on a child trafficking ring from the 1940s. What he uncovers will be used to support the launch of a true crime docuseries. He grabs a mask, hand sanitizer and heads for South Jersey…
From Beyond the Stars
by Dakota Ryder Hatch
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Would you trust an alien slime? Cassius was the first to witness it fall from the sky . . . but its crash landing wasn’t an accident. Novae was shot down. And now, the aliens that did it are searching for him. Their father, Overlord Cerebrum, hungers after the blob’s flesh and will stop at nothing to obtain the living slime.
If Cassius doesn’t get Novae off the planet and back to his home above, the world will become a warzone. People will die – his friends will perish – and any survivors will have their brains hijacked and become slaves to the faceless tyrant looming over the planet…
Thawed to Death
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.2 #ad
There’s non-stop laughter and suspense as 60-year-old antique “picker” Zoey Thunderbird explores the local ghost house and discovers a body in a freezer. She knows it was murder – no one deliberately thaws themselves to death – but she doesn’t know that her search for truth will endanger her life. Killers don’t want to get caught.
Her quest to catch a killer introduces Zoey to strange crime motifs – everything connected with the murder has a tendency to vanish, and the apparent killer seems to have an affinity for sitting in her lap…
He Started It
by Samantha Downing
Rating: 3.9 #ad
Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven’t all been together in years. And for very good reasons – we’ll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and – more importantly – secure their inheritance.
But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone…
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Murder at Beechwood
by Alyssa Maxwell
Rating: 4.5 #ad
For Newport, Rhode Island’s high society, the summer of 1896 brings lawn parties, sailboat races…and murder.
Having turned down the proposal of Derrick Andrews, Emma Cross has no imminent plans for matrimony—let alone motherhood. But when she discovers an infant left on her doorstep, she naturally takes the child into her care. Using her influence as a cousin to the Vanderbilts and a society page reporter for the Newport Observer, Emma launches a discreet search for the baby’s mother.
Check out:
(A Gilded Newport Mysteries)
The Heroes
by Joe Abercrombie
Rating: 4.6 #ad
They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbor, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.
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(First Law Standalones Mysteries)
If I Die Before I Wake
by Multiplea UAuthors
Rating: 4.3 #ad
TDon’t deny it. Your mind has dwelled for hours on the things you would do if your name was Karma. Malevolence towards those that wronged you festers and there is no relief—until now. Plunge headfirst into these sinister tales where karma finally takes control and vengeance is a dish that is best served hot.
The Better Off Dead series delves into the farthest corners of your mind, where your deepest, darkest fears lurk. These masters of horror will haunt your dreams and stalk your nightmares, taking you to the edge of sanity before pushing you to the brink of madness!
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(The Better Off Dead Mysteries)
Shadow Dance
by Julie Garwood
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Jordan Buchanan is thrilled that her brother and best friend are tying the knot. The wedding is a lavish affair–for the marriage of Dylan Buchanan and Kate MacKenna is no ordinary occasion. It represents the joining of two family dynasties. The ceremony and reception proceed without a hitch–until a crasher appears claiming to be a MacKenna guest. The disheveled and eccentric professor of medieval history warns that there’s “bad blood” between the couple’s clans, stemming from an ancient feud that originated in Scotland, and involving the Buchanan theft of a coveted MacKenna treasure.
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(Buchanan / Renard / MacKenna Mysteries)
Sleeping Dogs Lie
by Samantha Downing
Rating: 4.0 #ad
From the internationally bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and For Your Own Good comes a twisted, entertaining novella about a dog walker swept into a criminal investigation when her client winds up dead.
Shelby works as a dog walker in northern California, and she’s just finished up her bi-weekly trip to the park with a husky named Pluto. When she brings him back to his house, she finds his owner—Todd Burke, a well-known local businessman and founder of an organic supplements company—lying on the bathroom floor, dead…
Broken
by t.g. brown
Rating: 4.5 #ad
At first glance, the figure could have been construed as a large cocoon hanging from the church rafters. But as one moved closer, the outline of a man came into focus, his body strung upside down . . . his thick torso squirming against his restraints as though he was about to be reborn.
While bullfrog hunting on a cloud-covered night in the Louisiana Bayou JOSH INGRAM had no way of knowing the cogs of a grisly nightmare had already begun to turn. A nightmare that takes root with the murder of a priest in Northern Ireland only to find its way to a schoolyard in Louisiana.
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(Josh Ingram Mysteries)
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Murder in Connemara
by Carlene O’Connor
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Former New Yorker and interior designer Tara Meehan is eagerly anticipating the grand opening of her architectural salvage shop Renewals in her newly adopted home of Galway. She’s in the midst of preparations when heiress Veronica O’Farrell bursts in to announce she’s ready for some renewal of her own. To celebrate one year of sobriety, she’s invited seven people she wronged in her drinking days to historic Ballynahinch Castle Hotel in neighboring Connemara to make amends in style.
Check out:
(Murder in Galway)
Even Odds
by Fiona Quinn
Rating: 4.6 #ad
If she’s not careful, she’ll lose more than her heart on this mission…
Someone wants the men of Delta Force out of the way. Permanently. Defense intelligence officer Raine Meyers will do whatever it takes to neutralize the threat. But the job would be a lot simpler if she didn’t have to go undercover with her ex-fiancé—the only man she’s ever loved. The man she pushed out of her life seven years ago…
FBI special agent Damian Prescott lost Raine once. It’s not a mistake he plans to repeat. So, he’ll help her take down the terrorist threat against Delta Force, and keep her safe in the process. Then he’ll do everything he can to turn their fake, undercover relationship into a real one. The kind that ends in happily ever after…
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(FBI Joint Task Force Mysteries)
The Father Hunt
by Rex Stout
Rating: 4.6 #ad
All pretty Amy Denovo wants to find the father she has never seen, but she can’t afford Nero Wolfe’s outlandish fees . . . or can she? Suddenly she’s knocking on the oversized detective’s door with a parcel full of bills in hand—and a quarter of a million hidden in her closet. It’s all part of a nest egg left by her unknown father. But when Wolfe and his able assistant, Archie Goodwin, begin to trace the money to the man, they make a startling discovery: Amy’s father murdered her mother—and now he may be after her.
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(A Nero Wolfe Mysteries)
The Longest Echo
by Eoin Dempsey
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Against the backdrop of WWII-ravaged Italy comes a powerful and emotional novel of love, survival, justice, and second chances by the bestselling author of White Rose, Black Forest.
Occupied Italy, 1944. In the mountain regions south of Bologna, Liliana Nicoletti’s family finds escaped POW James Foley behind German lines. Committed to the anti-Fascist cause, they deliver him to a powerful band of local partisans. But when the SS launches a brutal attack against the Resistance, Liliana’s peaceful community is destroyed. Alone and thrown together by tragedy, James and Liliana fight together as Monte Sole burns. Forging an unbreakable bond, they know their only hope of survival is to make it to the Allied lines.
Sidney Sheldon’s Chasing Tomorrow
by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Tracy Whitney never thought she wanted to settle down. With her suave and handsome partner, Jeff Stevens, she’d been responsible for some of the world’s most astounding heists, relishing the danger and intensity of life on the wild side. But there is still one thing missing from Tracy’s perfect life: a baby.
At first “going straight” feels like a new adventure. But as the months pass and Tracy’s longed for pregnancy doesn’t happen, she finds herself yearning for the adrenaline rush of the old days. When a mysterious and beautiful stranger enters their lives, Tracy and Jeff’s once unbreakable partnership is suddenly blown wide open. Jeff wakes one morning to find Tracy gone, vanished without a trace.
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(Tracy Whitney Mysteries)
Sphere
by Michael Crichton
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface, a huge vessel is unearthed. Rushed to the scene is a team of American scientists who descend together into the depths to investigate the astonishing discovery. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship, but apparently it is undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old, containing a terrifying and destructive force that must be controlled at all costs.
Restitution
by Chris Lofts
Rating: 5.0 #ad
When technology expert Mo Archer’s father Roland goes missing he is unwittingly dragged into a Nazi art swindle 80 years in the making.
Mo tracks the last known location of the retired art lecturer’s phone to a place that makes no sense. When an old family friend calls, equally desperate to find his father, Mo is drawn in deeper. Emilia Carducci unfolds a decades-old family feud linked to a rediscovered masterpiece that has set the London art world and media abuzz.
Mo refuses to see the link between Roland’s disappearance and the painting until he uncovers what his father left behind. Fuelled by fear and armed with his discovery he turns to the only other person he can trust, his assistant Sapph…